Talkback chat on gay couple sickened listener, tribunal hears

When Steve Price and John Laws discussed the first episode of the reality TV show The Block on air, one listener says he was so disgusted he became physically ill.

Gary Burns, 47, heard Price on 2UE ask how parents would tell their children that two of the contestants, Gavin and Wazza, were gay. Laws said: "How would you explain it when children asked 'What do they do, Daddy?' "

Mr Burns, who is seeking apologies and $40,000, complained to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal that the comments on June 2 last year encouraged listeners to think homosexuals were sick and linked to pedophilia. He told the tribunal yesterday that he had formed this view "based on a pragmatic approach to the innuendo in the transcript".

Concerned that he was making too much of a leap, counsel for Laws and Price, Janet Oakley, asked him where the presenters had linked homosexuality to pedophilia. "It's there, a link between gay men and pedophilia. That's how I interpreted it."

Mr Burns said the broadcast implied "there was something perverted or sick or dirty about homosexuals being seen on television at 6.30pm at night".

After 2UE rebuffed his attempts to speak on air, he wrote to Laws accusing him of being a preacher of hate, and ugly. "Yes, he is very unattractive," he said yesterday.

Mr Burns, who has never met Gavin and Wazza, said he was not a regular listener to Price and had just happened on his show.